Raedthinn largely just wants to be left alone (he seems to be taking over for the late lamented Koshka in this regard). Buttons, on the other hand, wants to have fun. And part of having fun is play-fighting with other cats… which means sometimes Raedthinn. Raedthinn is perfectly capable of beating the tar out of Buttons; I’ve seen him bodily hurl Buttons halfway across the room (and boy, is that one surprised cat). But mostly he’s pretty inert.

A three-view of the Martin Model 313 “Submaster,” XP7M-1, from 1956. This was to be an “open ocean” anti-submarine patrol plane; it would operate well out at sea, refueling and reprovisioning from ships. Sadly for fans of flying boats, the whole idea of the flying boat was falling out of favor by this point, and the role was eventually filled by the land-based Lockheed P3 Orion.

You may notice that the ads have been replaced with “The webpage cannot be found.” This is related to an email I just got: “Your Google Adsense account has been disabled” for “invalid click activity.” No further data was provided, but I gather than this means somebody sat there and repeatedly clicked away on an ad. I guess. If that was you, and if the ads come back… don’t do that.

West of Denver, just past the first hogback of the Rocky Mountain Foothills, is “Dinosaur Ridge.” An exposed slab of sedimentary rock, tilted up prit near 90 degrees, is liberally covered with dinoaur footprints.

In this panorama, the main display is visible about 3/8 of the way across from the left.

Used to be, back when I lived in the area (more’n a decade ago), you could drive right on up the road and take a look. Now the road is blocked off with gates. You can walk up it or bike up it, but no cars. Kind of a pain in the keister.

A second piece of art depicting a seaplane variant of the Martin B-51. This time the fuselage mold line was little changed from the baseline aircraft. Instead, hydroskis were depicted to aid in takeoffs and landings from the surface of the water.

This is by far the most complexicated model kit that I’ve mastered, but from the looks of it, it was worth the effort. Now if it turns out that THIS was what was used to insert the SEALs into Casa Del bin Laden…

For some years I’ve posted updates about new products (Aerospace Projects Review, aerospace documents & drawings, Justo Miranda’s publications, etc.) by email to customers and those who have requested to be added to the list. Recently, the system I’ve been using – blind carbon copying a whole boatload of email address – has become troublesome and unweildy. So I’ve just signed up for the “icontact” system to manage these email updates.

If you want to be added to the email list you have to sign up. All that’s required is that you add your email address in the box below and hit “submit.” You won’t receive any emails apart from the subscription confirmation (it’s free, by the way) and any Up-Ship.com updates I send out. Your email address won’t be visible to others.

As built, the Martin B-51 had a pretty unusual layout. But Martin designers couldn’t leave well enough alone… they designed a flying boat version which required some substantial changes to the layout. Most importantly, the underslung engines were relocated to the upper side of the fuselage.

To aid in water landings & takeoffs, the landing gear was either deleted or replaced with hydroskis or “hydro-sleds.” The version shown here used a more or less conventional flying boat hull, with no landing gear at all.

This AM I sent out an email to my mailing list of people interested in APR and other stuff on Up-Ship.com. Sadly, shortly thereafter my email service was cut off. Apparently the mailing list was long enough that Earthlink decided that it was spam.

So, one of a few things might happen:

1) In a day or three service will be back up and running as normal

2) My email might get cut off permanently.

If #2, that means I’ll need to get another email service, with a new email address. Wunderbar.

In either event, I’ll need to come up with some other way to send out the rare message to a large number of people on a list. Anyone have any suggestions? If I don’t send you an email, or your emails to me bounce… well, you’ll know why.

NOTE: I have a backup email, which will either be turned into The Official Business Email if things turn out ok, or will become The Official Everything Email if they don’t:

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]